Financing the deleveraging of Ireland’s banks

Pre-crisis, Irish securitization was all about financing bank expansion. RMBS notes were a way for international investors to fund Ireland’s extraordinary property bubble, mediated by the bank originators that today are largely in state hands. Post-crisis, the same technology has worked in reverse. Today, securitization is largely being used to finance not the expansion of the banks, but their deleveraging, writes Owen Sanderson.